Lee H. Sentman III, 1937-2010

Professor emeritus in the department of aerospace engineering at U. of I.

March 22, 2010|By Cynthia Dizikes, Tribune Reporter

Lee H. Sentman III, a professor emeritus in the department of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois, loved flying small planes.

Kept from joining the Air Force because he didn't have perfect vision, Mr. Sentman instead flew private planes recreationally in his free time, friends and family said. For nearly seven years, Mr. Sentman painstakingly built his own two-seater plane, which he finished in 2008 and routinely flew around Illinois and Florida, where he and his wife owned homes.

"It is hard to explain, but some people just have a passion for flight," said David Carroll, Mr. Sentman's former student and longtime colleague. "He was one of those people who grew up when jets became real. He was a professor through the Apollo era when space got extremely exciting."

Mr. Sentman, 73, died Saturday, March, 20 when his RV-6 experimental aircraft collided midair with a small plane carrying a husband and wife about four miles southeast of Williston Municipal Airport in Florida.

Federal authorities were still investigating the cause of the crash Monday, said Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration. Investigators in central Florida are awaiting dental records and DNA tests to confirm the identities of the man and woman believed to be flying in the other small plane.

Mr. Sentman was participating in a "fly-out" as part of a regular meeting of the Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 812 Ocala, his wife, Janice, said.

"He came back to the house that afternoon because he forgot his airport key," said Janice Sentman. "I touched his back as he was leaving to go and said, ‘I love you,' and he said, ‘I love you too.' "

Mr. Sentman, who lived in Dewey, taught for more than 35 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He graduated from the university with a degree in aeronautical engineering in 1958 and received a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in 1965. While at U. of I., he directed the Chemical Laser Laboratory and won two Outstanding Teacher of the Year awards.

His lifetime work with high-energy lasers helped make possible the recent experiment in which a laser affixed to a 747 incinerated a Scud-like missile over the Pacific, said Wayne Solomon, former head of the U. of I.'s aerospace engineering department.

"He developed a lot of the basic science and technology for that laser," Solomon said. "The quality of work he was doing was very impressive."

Andrew Palla, who worked as a graduate student under Mr. Sentman in 2002, said he was drawn to Mr. Sentman's broad, yet rigorous, teaching style. Mr. Sentman would often work with students through the night tackling various engineering problems, Palla said.

Long drafts of thesis projects that were turned in late one day would always be edited and handed back to students the next day, Palla said.

"He was amazingly attentive to detail," said Palla, now a senior physicist at CU Aerospace in Champaign "He could read a 500-page thesis and find a comma out of place on the last page."

Mr. Sentman's family said that his thoroughness and dedication extended to the varied activities he pursued in life, whether it was his stint as an assistant fencing coach at the U. of I. or love of Illini basketball. Although he was retired, he still maintained an office on campus and did consulting work for CU Aerospace.

"He died doing what he wanted to do," said his daughter Jeanne Griswold. "It was a nice spring day — blue skies, few clouds — the kind of day you would love to go flying on."

Mr. Sentman is also survived by three other children, Charles, Christopher and Jessica Elwood, and 11 grandchildren.